Food for Thoughts

💨 Taking cold baths in the Atlantic Ocean always opens my mind and heart. As I warmed up in the autumn sun this morning, I found myself reflecting on the following question:  

💦 Our life values and the way we measure them play a crucial role in shaping our personal sense of happiness. Certain values can present significant challenges for individuals, and these challenges can prove to be quite formidable. Hence, I ponder: Which values may be arduous to pursue, and what is it that I can release or let go of?

🌿 Et voilà, here is my personal response. It might not be yours but it is mine. Pleaaaaaaase share your thoughts in the comments; I’m very to hear them: 

1. Maintaining Positivity ALWAYS: Some of us might measure their lives by the capacity to stay positive about everything. When facing difficult situations such as infidelity, a loved one’s illness, or job loss, it’s unrealistic to simply “stay positive.” Acknowledging and processing negative emotions is a healthy way to cope. Perpetual positivity can lead to repressed negative emotions that may ultimately result in emotional dysfunction. I personally experienced a tough spring and summer this year, struggled with this. Admitting this, is releasing.

2. Pursuit of Pleasure: Centering our lives around the pursuit of pleasure can be akin to addiction. Focusing solely on superficial pleasures can lead to emotional instability and increased depression. Pleasure should be a byproduct of a fulfilling life, not the primary source of happiness. In my view, pleasure is a beautiful side effect that arises when we align with our core values and (unconscious) criteria for measuring happiness.

3. Materialism: Many individuals gauge their self-worth by their financial success, the type of house they live in, and their travel experiences. Research indicates that once our basic needs for shelter and food are met, the connection between happiness and material success diminishes significantly. That might lead to the conclusion that some of us – me included during my intense M&A time – have killed ourselves working overtime and sundays for basically nothing.

4. The Need to Always Be Right: This can be particularly challenging for me, not only as a lawyer. In my educational and professional journey, I became highly efficient at making assumptions, assessing probabilities, and problem-solving in difficult situations. What I failed to recognize during my ambitious decades is that I often misremembered details, succumbed to cognitive biases, and let my emotions influence my decisions. Humans are permanently wrong, so I’ve learned the hard way that basing one’s life success on always being right is not a sustainable approach. Those who tie their self-esteem to infallibility hinder their personal growth and the opportunity to see different perspectives. It’s smarter to assume ignorance. This way I am in a perpetual state of learning and growth. Truly a remarkable journey that I wholeheartedly recommend.

Love 

Cocolina 

This slogan has been with me for a long time. It was last featured in one of my exhibitions in 2020, just before the world came to a halt in Feb 2020. Today, I find myself revisiting it, reimagining it, as it becomes a part of my Art Cocoshop, a project I’m currently working on.

As I was immersed in this creative process, a friend called me. She was grappling with the question of whether to end her relationship, asking me when one knows it’s time to let go, perhaps even a necessity. My response, perhaps influenced by my work on this very slogan, was to ask her to question the following:

• Have I done everything in my power? Have I pushed my own limits and even gone a step further?
• Has the other person also put in the same effort? Neither party usually enjoys this process, as it often entails pain for both sides. In relationships, especially, systemic entanglements can occur, where the anger towards one’s partner may represent the hurt child’s anger towards their own mother or father. 
• Would you wish this partnership – exactly the same partnership – for your children? A tough, straight forward question. The answer should be simple. 

Maybe these points can also help you today, on this magical Sunday.

Kisses from my art space where I am currently working full speed on my exhibition that opens this Thursday, 5th of October. More to follow, but I d love to disclose the title: 

„About the Cinderella who Realises She Does not Need Wings to Fly.“

Sunshine vibes,

Yours 

Coco

PS The Cocoletter is available : https://corinna-rosa.com/product/cocoletter-iii/

Relationship remains a mystery. It depends on both as it exists between two people.

Relationship is created by you, but in its turn, relationship also creates you.

When two persons meet, two worlds meet. It’s most complex. Each person is a proper world. With a long past and an eternal future.

At the beginning, only two peripheries meet. If the relationship grows intimate and becomes closer and deeper, two centers start meeting. When cores meet, it is called love.

When peripheries meet, it is acquaintance. You touch just from the boundaries. Very often you call your acquaintance love but acquaintance is not love.

Love is very rare.

To be able to meet a person at his centre is to pass through a process yourself because you will have to allow to this person to reach your core too. You will have to become open, soft and vulnerable.

This is risky.

To allow someone to reach your centre is dangerous because you never know what this person will do to you.

The fear is there. Once you drop all the curtains, you show all your hidden parts and all your secrets are known – the fear is there: you never know what the other person will do, you never know.

That’s why we rarely and barley open up. Why we are satisfied if peripheries meet. We think that love hit us.

But you are not your periphery – that’s just the fencing around your core. It is not you. The periphery is just where you end and the world begins.

The more you live with someone on the base of acquaintances, the more you might lose awareness of your core. And your core might then remain even more unknown even to yourself.

One thing to remind: Try not to mix acquaintances with love.

When you come close to your lover, once in a while, you become “one”, but those are rare moments, precious ones that you cannot make a 24/7 thing.

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If you try, you will destroy them. The whole beauty of love might disappear. When that moment is lost, it is gone and the separation to “I” and “you” is the consequence.

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“We” is a rare phenomenon. Once, for a few moments, lovers reach the point, where “I” and “you” disappears into each others, where boundaries melt away. Sweet, rare moments. Not to be taken for granted. 

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We each need our own space and respectively treat the space of the other one: no interference, no trespassing. If you do, you hurt the other one. The other one’s personality start to be destroyed. But because the other one is loving you, your partner will tolerate your actions. Toleration has no sustainable power, no beauty. Therefore, there is the risk that your partner will take revenge. Accumulation starts … you have interfered with so many small things that one day they all explode.

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That’s why lovers can’t stop fighting. Reason is the constant interference. 

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The basic requirement for love is that the other one has to be given the absolute freedom to be himself. 

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If he is happy, if you can be happy and participate in his happiness: good. If you cannot, leave him alone. 

If he is sad, if you can participate in his sadness: great. If you cannot, leave him alone and sing your song somewhere else. 

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Don’t drag him, leave him alone.

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Slowly respect might arise for each other. 

The basic requirement for love is that the other one has to be given the absolute freedom to be himself. 

And that might be one of the best foundations for a temple of love. 

xxx

Liebe gibt es auch auf meinen nächsten Lesungen: am 26.11 und 27.11 auf dem @maerchenbazar vom @wanndacircus, jeweils 14-15h // Eintritt frei // Märchenbazar, Olympia Park Süd, Spiridon-Louis-Ring 100, 80809 München

We are all different but still the same. Different in our cultural behaviors and preferences but same in regard of what defines us as humans. I love India despite its particular challenges. I love watching the holy cows passing by in the busy streets of Varanasi or laying relaxed at the beaches in Kerala. They move stoically, sit down in the middle of the road or just chew repetitively. In the Western world, most of the cows are looked-in in mass-cages. Once, I experienced the crying pain of a female cow from whom the baby cow was taken away. The mother cow literally went crazy. She freaked out. Humans belong to the species of animal. Even if we do everything to distinguish us from them so that we can view ourselves being superior. But at the end, there is no demarcation line. We are different but still the same.

Soldiers, not older than 19 years. One who spoke a bit of English. A limited conversation was possible.

When I looked into the faces of the soldiers standing around me, I could see childishness pared with innocence. Boys, not men yet? 

But at the same time, they are ready to kill and they are ready to die in the fight. 

To fight a battle that is more than 10.000km away from their home Vladivostok.

The guy who run me over in his car last year by not respecting the right light was 20 years old. He was punished after German juvenile criminal law.

At the other end of the world, younger men as him were recruited to fight a war for a cause they might not even understand themselves clearly enough. Younger man who might have joined the military mainly because of financial needs?

Still, they were more boys then men to me.

Something we might consider to prohibit on an international level. 

But who would then go to war, in particular when not in front of your door step. 

Would you? 

Ever wonder why you’re attracted to some people & triggered by others? It’s not happening by chance.

The people you’re attracted to may actually have qualities you desire, that you have yet to embody yourself. So look at them as an inspiration as to how you truly want to live.

If you seek connection outside, without first embodying it within yourself, then your source of connection is dependent of factors outside your control. 

This not only gives your power away, but it is a setup for suffering. 

Manage your mind, play the creative game of life and view the people you judge, or are triggered by, as your shadow trainer.

They reveal to you parts of yourself you have not yet come to accept & love. Or they present to you wounds you carry from past traumatic experiences that have not been properly processed. 

To become the boss of your mind and use it as a great source of inspiration and creativity is the path to true freedom.

Think about it, don’t just follow my ideas – make your experiences and come to a conclusion for yourself. As someone else can never live your life and will never be able to make the experiences for you.